Ragged Lady — Volume 2 eBook

Miss Milray hesitated. She was thinking superficially
that she had never heard Clementina say had ought,
so much, if ever before. Interiorly she was recurring
to a sense of something like all this before, and to
the feeling which she had then that Clementina was
really cold-blooded and self-seeking. But she
remembered that in her former decision, Clementina
had finally acted from her heart and her conscience,
and she rose from her suspicion with a rebound.
She dismissed as unworthy of Clementina any theory
which did not account for an ideal of scrupulous and
unselfish justice in her.

“That is something that nobody can say but yourself,
Clementina,” she answered, gravely.

“Yes,” sighed Clementina, “I presume
that is so.”

She rose, and took her little girl from Miss Milray’s
knee. “Say good-bye,” she bade, looking
tenderly down at her.

Miss Milray expected the child to put up her lips
to be kissed. But she let go her mother’s
hand, took her tiny skirts between her finger-tips,
and dropped a curtsey.

“You little witch!” cried Miss Milray.
“I want a hug,” and she crushed her to
her breast, while the child twisted her face round
and anxiously questioned her mother’s for her
approval. “Tell her it’s all right,
Clementina!” cried Miss Milray. “When
she’s as old as you were in Florence, I’m
going to make you give her to me.”

“Ah’ you going back to Florence?”
asked Clementina, provisionally.

“Oh, no! You can’t go back to anything.
That’s what makes New York so impossible.
I think we shall go to Los Angeles.”

XL.

On her way home Clementina met a man walking swiftly
forward. A sort of impassioned abstraction expressed
itself in his gait and bearing. They had both
entered the shadow of the deep pine woods that flanked
the way on either side, and the fallen needles helped
with the velvety summer dust of the roadway to hush
their steps from each other. She saw him far
off, but he was not aware of her till she was quite
near him.

“Oh!” he said, with a start. “You
filled my mind so full that I couldn’t have
believed you were anywhere outside of it. I was
coming to get you—­I was coming to get my
answer.”

Gregory had grown distinctly older. Sickness
and hardship had left traces in his wasted face, but
the full beard he wore helped to give him an undue
look of age.

“Oh, I’m not so sure of that,” she
said, with gentle perplexity, as she stood, holding
the hand of her little girl, who stared shyly at the
intense face of the man before her.

“I am,” he retorted. “I have
been thinking it all ever, Clementina. I’ve
tried not to think selfishly about it, but I can’t
pretend that my wish isn’t selfish. It
is! I want you for myself, and because I’ve
always wanted you, and not for any other reason.
I never cared for any one but you in the way I cared
for you, and—­”